I-Corps: Advanced Integration Methods for Garment-based Wearable Technologies

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是了解不断发展的纺织电子行业的产品应用机会。纺织电子是一个要求新技术的采用满足纺织行业严格的成本和舒适性要求的领域，同时保持电子行业严格的设备性能指标。 通过这个I-Corps项目，有机会了解变革性工艺技术与在健身/保健、健康/医疗、工业/军事、这个I-Corps项目将探索适用于制造低成本服装可穿戴设备的变革性电子互连技术的市场潜力。 这项工作中关注的技术允许通过简单的热熨策略（类似于热层压标签或制造商徽标的放置）用电子设备翻新服装的能力。 该技术是目前纺织电子产品中使用的导电纱线和笨重电线的替代品，这些材料将可穿戴设备的规模扩大限制为少量，并导致穿着者不舒服的笨重服装。 这种熨烫技术允许以低成本，可定制的方式连接服装上的多个设备，并实现纺织电子产品领域的战略扩张。这个I-Corps项目旨在通过对纺织电子行业主要利益相关者的客户之声分析来了解该技术的机会。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to understand product application opportunities in the evolving textile electronics industry. Textile electronics is a field which requires that new technologies adoption meets the stringent cost and comfort requirements of the textiles industry, while maintaining the rigid device performance metrics of the electronics industry. The opportunity exists through this I-Corps project to understand the tradeoffs between a transformative process technology with the ability to form cost effective, customized textile electronics products in fitness/wellness, health/medical, industrial/military, and fashion/infotainment markets.This I-Corps project will explore the market potential for a transformative electronic interconnect technology applicable to the fabrication of low-cost garment-based wearable devices. The technology focused upon in this work allows for the ability to retro-fit garments with electronics by simple heat iron-on strategy, similar to placement of a heat laminated tag or manufacturer logo. This technology is an alternative to conductive yarn and bulky wires used currently in textile electronics, materials which limit scale-up of wearables to small quantities and results in a bulky garment that is uncomfortable to the wearer. This iron-on technology allows for the ability to connect multiple devices on a garment in a low cost, customizable way and enables a strategic expansion of the textile electronics product landscape. This I-Corps project seeks to understand the opportunities for the technology through a voice-of-customer analysis of the key stakeholders in the textile electronics industry.